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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Having traveled through what is supposed to be the least interesting of the Three Gorges during the night, the day started early with a 5:30 AM wakeup call so we could be ready to go on the excursion up Shennong Stream by 6:30 AM. Our tour guide came to get us and gave us tickets and we followed everyone else onto a smaller ship, which took us around an hour up the Shennong Stream, through some dramatic scenery. Being the only white people on board, we got a decent amount of attention, and quite a few people wanted to take their pictures with us... though it wasn't as bad as in India.

Next we transferred into smaller boats of around 30 people, with 5 guys working the ores and rudder, and a different tour guide providing Chinese commentary and entertainment (singing). The other passengers also sung some songs, and at one point asked us to sing something, but we were a little slow on the uptake and the moment passed before we acted.

They paddled us up to some minor rapids, then the guys hopped off and started dragging the boat up to the top of the rapids before we turned around and returned. All in all, the rapids were pretty lame, and our American sensibilities don't sit very well with sitting around on a boat being pulled up stream at great effort by 4 guys. Wouldn't it have made more sense for the 30 of us to get off and walk the 30 feet up stream? I mean really, it wouldn't have been such a hard walk.

After lunch and a brief nap, we went up onto the sun deck of our ship to watch Wu Gorge go by. It was lovely, but eventually we had to go back below because it was just too hot out in the sun. We played some cards (bid bridge hands) to pass the time after we got tired of looking out the window.

After a while our cabin mates told us (though hand gestures, pointing to stuff on their schedule, and entries in our Lonely Planet—they don't speak English) that the boat was stopping at Fengjie for 2 hours. Our tour guide brought her English-speaking friend by and tried to sell us 90 Yuan ($14 tickets) to something, we think a fancy meal on the boat, but it could have been the excursion that didn't sound very interesting in Lonely Planet. We spent a while wandering around Fengjie looking for somewhere to eat dinner. The street food mostly didn't look appetizing, and the restaurants were all empty (a little early for dinner) and had no English or photo menus, so we didn't know how to solve the ordering problem.

Eventually we sat down for a while and (after much frustration) found the section in Lonely Planet with common Chinese dishes written out in English and Chinese characters, then chose a restaurant and pointed to stuff in Lonely Planet until we had two things that she said they served: Sweet and Sour Pork, and Fried Rice with Egg. The sweet and sour pork ended up being a big plate of bacon, cubes of pork fat, bell pepper chunks, and okra, with nothing that seemed like sweet and sour sauce. However, it was the best bacon we've had since leaving the US. The fried rice with egg seemed to just be white rice, fried egg, oil, and salt, but it was some of the best fried egg we've had in a while to. So all in all the meal was a quite a lot like breakfast for dinner, but much enjoyed nevertheless.

Shortly after we got back and before the boat was supposed to leave, our guide stopped by to verify that we'd made it back. For all that she doesn't know any English, or seem to have any interest in attempting to communicate non-verbally, she has been looking after us quite nicely.

The boat ended up staying at the dock until it got dark, which is a pity as the final of the Three Gorges started immediately after Fengjie and was only like 7 km long. We hung out on the sun deck for a while, but couldn't see much. It was a full moon, but misty enough that we weren't getting much moonlight. Oh well.